


O Gentle Sleep, Nature's Soft Nurse

by bigolegay



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Ambiguously Happy Ending, Anal Fingering, Angst with a Happy Ending, Insomnia, M/M, Mentions of dead animals, Mentions of past James/Miranda, Mentions of past Thomas/Miranda, Mentions of past Thomas/Miranda/James, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Oral Sex, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Past Violence, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rimming, Smut, Thomas is just as full of Righteous Queer Fury as James, i swear it's happier than it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 18:48:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13723815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigolegay/pseuds/bigolegay
Summary: Mornings were times to be awake. The sea did not stop its relentless movement, and thus James had awoken. The cane had not slept, and thus Thomas had not, either.ORJames and Thomas attempt to lie-in in the mornings, and fail a lot.





	O Gentle Sleep, Nature's Soft Nurse

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part II.
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely [bitnotgood](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bitnotgood/pseuds/bitnotgood), who was wonderful, and incredibly useful! Thank you for taking the time to go through my atrocious grammar and punctuation!
> 
> Emetophobia warning for the paragraph beginning ' _Other ill effects of Thomas’ stay in Bethlem still remained_ '.

_“What hath night to do with sleep?”_

― **John Milton, Paradise Lost**

 

They did not lie in. It was not that they did not desire to – in London laying about in bed had become as easy as breathing. Those long Saturday mornings in the attic room had become second nature to them. The lazy, half-dressed quality of it did away with the formalities of life that hindered the mind and soul and heart. In those hours, the last of their clothing fell away along with the hold of a tightly-buttoned and short-tempered society. Being a slugabed was no sin there, though neither were so many other things.

In their new home it was not so easy. A decade can change someone – something the both of them understood deeply. Hard labour had not just transformed the physicality of their bodies but also the soft, malleable parts of their minds. For years, time had lost its meaning. Without a fitting end, the play of their existences had droned on in colours of brown and blue and grey, interrupted by snatches of adrenaline-soaked red, and a dark, powder black. Now that time had been restored to them their lives could be lived on terms of their choosing. But life is not as simple as choosing to be and who to be with. It requires many things – food, and water, and shelter, and fire, and so on and so forth until suddenly your day is not yours at all, belonging instead to a string of errands.

Mornings were times to be awake. The sea did not stop its relentless movement, and thus James had awoken. The cane had not slept, and thus Thomas had not, either.

But they were now far from the sea, and from the cane. The memories of such places were smothered with thick soot and flame. Here, on the edges of the colonies where English rule was uncertain and all around them was wild, their lives should not have been governed by the timing of any other man. But still, each morning for thirteen months they had found themselves awake, awfully awake, as if the roil of the ocean was under them and the cruel figure of the overseer was above them, bucking them up from their bed. They had tried to cling to it and had clung to each other instead. But there was no time to lie there and discuss literature and philosophy and politics, no time to kiss and touch and fuck, when the goat was bleating for food, and the fire needed stoking, and the crops needed tending again.

“Perhaps our bodies are just not meant for it, now,” James had said in a voice as small as he could make it as Thomas clung to the sheets one morning with a frustrated grimace, and attempted to will sleep upon the both of them.

It was not something James thought they should feel so strongly about. After all, they were together, they were _alive_ , and another hour awake just meant another hour in each other’s presence. But he could see that it gnawed on Thomas; it made him frustrated and irritable. On the worst days his mood would turn black, and Thomas would move about their tiny one-room hut with rage in his stride and with his back terrifyingly, painfully straight. Later, when the ache kicked in, James would lay him down on the bed and rub oil into scarred tissue until his lover was soft beneath his fingers, and the only hardness was between his legs.

 

*

 

“I cannot _stand_ it,” Thomas hissed one morning as they dressed. He shoved his arms fiercely into the sleeves of his shirt.

James, who had been pulling up his stockings, looked over his shoulder at the tense frame of his lover and held back a sigh. “It’s not all bad,” he replied, trying to soothe, and abandoned his socks for the moment. “We have more hours in the day to spend together.”

“But that is not the point,” Thomas bit. His voice was savage, raw. “It’s-” he screwed up his face, and James could see his jaw working, his teeth grinding together painfully. He stood up and made his way around the bed.

“What?” he asked as he stepped towards Thomas, reaching out a hand to touch his arm, to try and provide some form of comfort.

“I _want_ it,” Thomas said, his voice breaking as he looked at James, imploring him to understand. “I _deserve_ it.”

And James did understand. For the past decade _deserve_ had been a dirty word. It was something that was spat at them and accompanied, always, by pain. _Deserve_ was a punch to the gut. _Deserve_ was a corded rope. _Deserve_ was a dream snatched away. _Deserve_ was never sweet, was never desired. But it was meant to be. _Deserve_ was the absent apology from the empire which had done them wrong. _Deserve_ was their life, tangled up in each other unapologetically. _Deserve_ was a morning spent dozing after a decade of forced and desolate early mornings.

James moved his hand from Thomas’ arm to his face. He cupped his cheek, he ran his thumb over the creases at the corner of his eye.

“I know you do,” he said.

Miranda had always been better at soothing Thomas. She had been better at soothing him, too. It had not been a pleasant job for her, chasing after the men she loved as they flung themselves into harm’s way all whilst denying herself that same abandon. In the end the dam of her patience had to break, and it had killed her. In moments like this James was all too well reminded of that, and missed her terribly. Her absence was palpable, sometimes, like a heavy shadow. It cut between them, made them cold, and at its worst made James wonder if they could ever exist without her; if they were a hobbled, three-legged stool and without Miranda they would simply buckle under any amount of pressure, and collapse.

Thomas, despondent in the face of his sleeplessness, sighed, kissed James’ palm, and pulled away to continue dressing.

 

*

 

One morning they woke a whole half hour later than they usually would. It wasn’t much. Indeed, it was a far call from those days in London, where neither of them would be seen until around midday as their stomachs finally won over their hearts. But six was still a way off of half five, and just that fact alone set Thomas into a good mood. James woke to the progression of sleep-warm toes on his calves and of smiling lips at his neck.

“Good morning,” he mumbled, turning into Thomas’ affections, seeking him out in the weak dawn sun.

“Good morning,” Thomas repeated back to him, and slowly stretched each part of him – his toes, his legs, his back-

“Oh,” James breathed around a smile as he felt Thomas’ hardness press against him, “Good _morning_.” He felt Thomas’ laugh buzz on his skin. Outside the goat let out an ugly, whining bleat, and Thomas curled an arm possessively around James’ middle.

“Leave her,” he mumbled. “Let’s not allow this moment to pass us, yet.”

Their home smelled of smoke. The wind last night had blown down the chimney, pushing great streams of soot into the grate and staining the stone at the lip a dark, greasy black. In the sunlight James could see fragile waves of grey film hanging in the air. It reminded him of fog on still water, of low cloud over London, of the burning remains of the places he had left behind. The whole situation felt familiar and yet unrelentingly alien, as if in the night some foul trickster had moved everything in their home an inch to the right.

Some mornings were simply like this. There was no trigger, or none that James had been able to find. He simply awoke, and rather than feeling delighted by his current life, he felt drawn to dwell on those he had had before. Those were days where speech often eluded him, where his hands felt clumsy when faced with anything other than a sword or pistol, and he tried his best to spend them hunting or working the crops so that he would be alone. He did not want Thomas to be met with the ghost of Flint. Thomas _deserved_ better.

Thomas, unaware of James’ discomfort, shifted against his hip and threw a thick, muscled thigh over him with a sigh. His lips were soft but insistent, and his hips pressed firmly forwards.

They made love in that sleepy, sticky way one does in the morning, finding completion in a stuttering way. And if James wept afterwards then Thomas did not mock him for it, only held him in his arms and hushed him until all was calm but that insistent bleat from outside.

“What is it?” he finally whispered into James’ hair.

“Nothing,” James started, his breath not quite stable but far smoother than it had been. His face was hot and damp against Thomas’ collarbone. “I suppose I just missed this.” It was only part of a lie. He had missed these mornings, but his emotions had not just been stirred by that. He missed many things from the past life, and having something akin to a part of it, and on one of these days, only made the ache for those other things worse.

He missed their attic room with its lacklustre bed and curtain-less window. He missed the study, the smell of leather-bound books and burning coal and ink and paper. He missed the coffee shop Thomas dragged him to a handful of times, where they sat amongst his peers and James watched and listened, as if it were one of his salons and not a public place full of strangers. Thomas drew those around him into discussions on right and wrong, man and God, and all sorts of great and wonderous things. He missed Miranda, God did he miss her, and the thought of her set a fresh peal of tears over his face.

Thomas held him close and hushed him once more. “We have it now.” He whispered, and James was struck by Thomas’ simple manner of speech, the humble linen sheets they slept in, and wept harder for the things that England had robbed of them both.

There were no more accidental lie-ins for a while after that, and purposeful ones still seemed beyond their reach. After a while they gave up and resigned such decadence to the past. They mourned it, like they mourned so much else from their past that was no longer accessible to them, and then they tried to move on.

The way to survive grief, Thomas had once told him in those first weeks of freedom, was to find compromise.

“In Bethlem I had nothing to compromise with. There was nothing there to have.” They had taken everything from him. Sometimes James pressed his lips to the pocked scars on his forearms. Sometimes Thomas could barely stand to watch him. “But in Savannah there was at least the air, and the soil, and they did not take from me the very essences of my life. And so I found there a sort of comfort. I could not replace what I had lost, but I could find things that gave me some sense of happiness.”

So, Thomas and James found compromise.

They did not sleep in, but on Sundays, once they had dressed and breakfasted, they sat themselves on the fur-piled couch and read together. They did not have the variety of books once at their disposal in London, but they had enough, if rationed, to sustain them. When Thomas made his monthly trip to the nearest town, he always made sure to return with one or two more. Some Sundays there would be one book between them, and they would take turns in reading aloud until, inevitably, they fell into discussion and the book lay forgotten in their laps. Other times they sat sprawled together on the carpet-laden floor in quiet contemplation of their own tomes, occasionally pausing to read an especially well-put excerpt to each other. Other times still they did not read at all but lay there before the fire, murmuring half-remembered snippets of words read long ago.

In the afternoons in the week they tried to snooze. After their morning work and their midday meal they removed their overclothes and curled together on the couch or the bed. They thought that between fullness from a meal of bread and goat’s cheese, and tiredness from a morning of toil, they were sure to fall asleep. But of all of their compromises, this was the only one that they could truly say had failed. Just as it was in the morning, neither of them could quite lull themselves into the peaceful arms of Hypnos. They lay in silence and waited for the sleepiness of the afternoon to overwhelm them, and when it did not they felt they had wasted their time, and Thomas became grumpy again.

It was worse when the days grew shorter, as each minute of daylight was useful for working and reading and sewing, and all sorts of other small and tricky jobs that strained their eyes. So eventually they put the idea to bed, and wished instead that it had done so to them.

 

*

 

“I’m fucking exhausted.”

In the years they had spent apart Thomas had increased his use of curses. Where before they were private things gasped in James’ ear, now they were so common Thomas sounded closer to sailor than lord. James barely blinked at their usage. Being firstly in the navy and secondly a pirate made one unflinching in the face of such words or the acts they described. But he did look up from darning a hole in one of Thomas’ socks, and he did see the bags beneath Thomas’ eyes, and he frowned. It was true, Thomas was fucking exhausted. Perhaps it had been the harvest that had wiped him out. Or maybe he was entering into a new period of malaise, an aftereffect of his treatment in Bethlem. Either way, _fucking exhausted_ was written on Thomas’ face and in every slumped line of his body.

Had it not been that their attempts at napping had all failed, James would have suggested they try again. But all that seemed it would do was frustrate Thomas further, make him tense and acerbic. James lay the sock and needle down on the table, and walked over to the couch where Thomas slumped and stared unblinkingly into the fire. When Thomas didn’t look at him, James held out a hand.

“Let me try something,” he said, flexing his fingers. Thomas stared at his hand a moment, and then sighed, placing a hand of his own into it and pulling himself to stand. The creases around his eyes cramped together in a miniscule smile. James led them both to the bed.

“ _James_ ,” Thomas started, reacting exactly as James had predicted.

“It’s not that,” he replied, and let go of Thomas’ hand to work at the buttons of his waistcoat, “I want to help you relax.” Thomas swatted his hands away and unbuttoned himself with a sigh.

“I don’t know if I’m quite in the _mood_ for that,” he mumbled at his feet, but continued to undress, tackling the buttons of his revealed shirt.

“It’s not that, either,” James laughed, and undid the few buttons at the waist of Thomas’ breeches. He knelt on the hard floor to undo those at his knees and roll down his stockings. There was no complaint, and between the two of them they stripped Thomas bare. The room of their house was warm enough that Thomas did not complain, but he did hug his arms to his chest, looking nonplussed at the whole situation.

“Right then,” James patted the bed, “On you get.”

Silently, Thomas pulled himself atop the mattress and James busied himself with straightening out his clothes and draping them over the back of the couch. He did not want them to crease strangely during the time they were unworn. Though their clothes were humble, Thomas always enjoyed making himself presentable. With that task finished, James then set about grabbing the jar of oil they used for massages on days where pain became unbearable, and smiled at the recognition that sparked on his lover’s face as he saw it. Thomas rolled onto his front without even being asked.

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” he mumbled into a pillow, and tapped his feet gently against the bed. “Would you cover my feet? I fear they might get cold.”

James did so, pulling the blankets out from beneath Thomas and laying them over his legs. Once he was sure that Thomas would be warm, he rolled up his sleeves and clambered up over the other, sitting primly atop Thomas’ bare bottom. It took a little adjustment, but James eventually managed to find a position where he wasn’t uncomfortable. “Alright?” he asked.

Thomas propped himself up on his elbows and looked at him over his shoulder. He eyed James’ exposed forearms with a teasing but heatless smile, and wiggled to test his manoeuvrability under James’ weight. Obviously satisfied, he lay back flat on the bed with a sigh which still sounded tired, but held a glimmer of warmth about it – a sigh in the sunlight, not a huff against the cold. “Alright,” he echoed, and rubbed his face into one of the pillows.

With the both of them settled, James got to work. The oil was slightly cool, but quickly warmed up when dribbled onto Thomas’ back. He worked it over with broad strokes of his hands, and kneaded it in with the heels of his palms.

It had taken months for Thomas to allow this.

In ten years both of their bodies had changed. James had become stockier. His freckles had bloomed and darkened in the Caribbean sun. With age his middle had become less trim and he had grown a paunch. He also had new scars, of course. From small ones such as the miniature hook on his right cheek, to the more substantial slash from Singleton and the gruesome bullet wound from Dufresne. But whatever changes he could plot on his body paled in comparison to the transformation Thomas had been put through.

In their days together in London James was always aware of the modesty of Thomas’ features. He was tall and slender of frame, but in no way gangly or stretched. His form was neither fat nor thin, muscled nor emaciated. He had a roundness in his nose, his eyes, his lips, yet he was not so round as to be amorphous and free of handsome angles. He did not completely lack body hair, nor was he covered in it. He did not have the freckles that James had, nor did he even have the light smattering of moles that Miranda wore, but he was not entirely without blemishes, either. He existed as a prime example of physical moderation in a body that was easily identifiable as belonging to a noble.

Now, Thomas’ form was covered in signs of the extreme. His body was thick with work-formed muscle and had only recently begun to pad out with fat. His hands were roughened from days of hoeing and digging and scything. His shoulders were permanently bronzed from the sun. There was something about the curve of his back that looked unhealthy and overworked, and which obviously caused him pain. And all over him were scars from his time in Bethlem.

They were small, sharp things, which sometimes bubbled out into little pearls of shiny white skin. James could easily remember the time Thomas first explained them. He could remember the bile in his throat, the way his skin itched empathetically, how his hands craved to touch and press, as if by want alone he could undo what was done to his lover.

“They would bleed us in the spring,” he had said as James held him, “they would bleed us all over. Sometimes they would rub us with Spanish Fly and leave us to blister. Then they would snip those pustules open, and bleed us again.” James shook with the knowledge, and held Thomas tighter.

Other ill effects of Thomas’ stay in Bethlem still remained. His stomach had gained a peculiar weakness, and there were periods, sometimes lasting days, where he could hold nothing down but water and clear broth, and would exist in a dreadful sort of malaise. He retained a vulnerability to the cold and spent the winter sneezing, shivering, and coughing so hard that on some days he brought up blood and burned with fever. He had an _extreme_ aversion to cold water, and refused to even drink it, preferring it hot and boiling or simply not at all. There were some herb-rubbed foods that they had once both enjoyed together that Thomas could no longer stand the smell of, often sending his stomach into those well-known fits.

James tried not to ruminate on these effects too much as he knew that his dwelling upset Thomas, but he could not help but be furious at the world for allowing such atrocities, for urging their necessity, for prescribing them itself. Neither could he help but pay kind attention to the divots and pocks on Thomas’ skin each time he revealed them.

Under his soothing touch Thomas sighed. James could feel his lungs work beneath his hands, expanding, filling, and then pushing out and collapsing again. His oiled fingers slipped on Thomas’ shoulders and found the nape of his neck, working there with careful reverence at the hard knots formed by their labour.

They continued for what must have been at least half an hour, James sometimes shifting on his perch, often drawing from Thomas small sounds of approval when the weight of his bulk was redistributed. James’ hands were hot by the end, and all of Thomas’ back glimmered with a sheen of oil. Like this, the scars were ten times as visible, catching the light in their unevenness.

“I must look like I’ve the pox,” Thomas had said the first time James had seen them. James had shaken his head and touched them delicately with fumbling fingers. To him Thomas had always been a guiding star, but now he looked like the summer sky in the evening; when the moon and stars hung overhead but the sun had not yet set, casting all of the world beneath in sparkling light.

“I can hear you thinking,” Thomas said now, and the rumble of his voice ran into James’ fingers where they rested.

“I was contemplating how handsome you are,” James responded, never one to hide such thoughts, always quick to share them. Thomas chuckled beneath him and sighed, stretching. There was a bitterness to that chuckle, but James knew better than to comment on it.

“James?”

“Yes?”

“Would you work on my thighs?”

With a fond and knowing smile James rose on his knees and shuffled his way down Thomas’ body. The back of Thomas’ thighs were gloriously sensitive areas. James peeled back the blanket to Thomas’ ankles, and nudged his way between his legs.

“How are you feeling?” he asked as he stretched over Thomas’ back to dip his fingers back in the pot of oil. It was a little too far, and James rested a hand on Thomas’ back to steady him, drawing out a little ‘ _oof_ ’ of complaint.

“Relaxed. Good.” Thomas replied, and flexed his legs either side of James’ knees. “Still tired.”

James nodded, “I know.”

He set to work on Thomas’ thighs. Thomas’ sensitivity here was not a new thing. In London Thomas had guided his hands there in bed and given instruction on how to stroke and grab and bite. James would sometimes run his nails over them at the same time as he fit Thomas’ cock in his mouth, and would delight in the strangled noises they elicited. They were firmer now than they once had been, thick with muscle, heavy and hot beneath his hands, and James found himself even more enamoured with them. He squeezed them both, one in each hand, and heard the hitch in Thomas’ breath.

“I thought you weren’t in the mood for this,” he mused, rubbing the oil over his legs from the ticklish back of his knee up to the swell of his buttocks. It was more of a question than a statement, as James fretted over how far he should go in teasing.

“It’s more that I don’t feel I have the energy for it,” Thomas shrugged, his glistening back catching the light. “I just… I want to feel the heat of it.”

James could understand. He, too, enjoyed a long, sustained buzz of arousal. The either-or nature of it was comforting; nothing _had_ to be done, but something could if the mood took him. It was fun, too, to tease and to be teased.

Sometimes he would kiss Thomas for what felt like hours, never progressing into something beyond the wet touch of lips and tongue and the heavy drag of hands over clothed skin. It was intoxicating, exhilarating. Afterwards they would perhaps fuck slowly on the bed until they both reached completion. Other times they would not, but would go about their day or night with shared glances and smiles until the heat faded away into warm familiarity.

James worked one thigh with both hands and listened as Thomas groaned luxuriously. With practised ease he kneaded at the muscle in long rolling motions, pressed his thumbs into the line of muscle where it separated around the back of the knee, and ran a teasing thumb in the sensitive line where thigh became buttock.

The effect was obvious in Thomas. His cheeks flushed, his delicate ears turning red and hot, and his body opened to James’ touch. There was a subtle relaxation in his arms in counterpoint to the way he flexed his fingers and rubbed them insistently against the bedsheets. After a while of sharing such a treatment over both of his legs, James saw Thomas canting his hips against the mattress. He knew without looking that Thomas would be hard and full against the sheets. In his own breeches, James swelled.

“Still good?” he asked, and took note of how deep his own voice had become.

“Yes,” Thomas replied, his voice slightly slurred from pressing into the pillow. “I think that’s all I need.”

James’ hands had become used to the feeling of skin and oil and the hairs of Thomas’ legs gliding under his palms. When he pulled them away they buzzed, warm and sensitive, and he leant over to press a kiss to the slick skin of his lover’s back. Oil smudged on the tip of his nose.

“I’ll get a cloth,” he mumbled, and heard the whisper of Thomas’ hair against the pillow as he nodded.

James’ knees creaked when he clambered out of the bed, and he barely avoided staggering as blood flow returned properly to his lower legs. The peculiar tickle and burn as his legs reawakened began as he grabbed a rag from the kitchen, and he walked gingerly back to  Thomas, trying to press as little of his feet as he could against the floor to avoid the laughter it sought to pull from him. He clambered up onto the bed quickly, leaving his legs spread out and tingling as he wiped the oil from Thomas’ back, and then from his thighs.

“Please kiss me,” Thomas mumbled from the pillows, and James ran the cloth up the inside of Thomas’ thigh as he leant over and kissed Thomas’ temple with a smile on his lips. Under him Thomas turned, the motion pulling James’ hand over his buttocks, and dragged their lips together.

His mouth was chilled from breathing, and the points of his fingers were cold on James’ neck. They danced down to his collarbone, dipped under his shirt, and then his hand settled at the back of James’ neck. It felt possessive, comforting. James squeezed the round muscle of Thomas’ arse in reply and heard his moan gently. When he pulled back Thomas was smiling, and he slumped back on the bed with a coquettish glance at the bulge James sported.

“Should I dress?” he asked, scratching idly at his chest.

“Do you want to?” James asked back. Thomas was a feast to look at, from the flush of his face, to his broad shoulders, his washboard stomach, and down to his proud cock. There was still a weariness in his form, though, something about the way he didn’t stretch on the bed, but flopped. “I could take care of you, if you want,” James suggested, wetting his lips with his tongue. “You’d not even have to move.”

Thomas dragged his eyes over James, and then looked down at his own nude body. His lips were pursed lightly, his brow drawn. He took a long moment to think, fingers now drumming on his chest in a rhythm. After a while he sighed and any inner conflict was obviously resolved. A smile ticked at his lips. “Come here,” he murmured, looking up at James through his lashes and laying his hand on his forearm. Eagerly, James slid down beside Thomas, kicking his buzzing legs to the bottom of the bed and tangling them up with his lover’s.

Thomas kissed him before he could even settle, one hand in his hair, the other at his waist. He shifted on the bed and pressed his hips to James’ with a low, soft moan. James gripped at his buttocks, at his upper thighs, on the inside of them where Thomas was hot and damp. There was a frantic energy in the way Thomas was kissing him, and a little worry crept up in James as he remembered the bags beneath Thomas’ eyes and the pale shade of his cheeks. He abandoned the rag between Thomas’ legs and moved his hand up to his hip, stroking it in a soft and smooth rhythm.

“Hush,” he mumbled as he broke the kiss. “I said I’d take care of you.”

“You already do,” Thomas replied, and James’ heart melted as he heard the devotion in his tone, and raw sentiment. He kissed him again, slow, and squeezed his hip in steady pulses until Thomas felt lax beneath him. With his worry abated, James ducked his head to Thomas’ neck and found the rag at the same time, pressing it up into the cleft of Thomas’ arse. The flesh under his lips was hot and damp with sweat, and James licked it firmly, the point of his tongue strong against the tendons. He felt Thomas shudder beside him, and his own answering moan echoed in the hot space between them.

“Is it alright if I put my tongue upon you?” he asked quietly into Thomas’ ear. Thomas’ fingers bit into the flesh of his waist and scratched at his scalp with a twitch. A low sound emitted from his throat, and James pulled back a little to give him space, to see his expression.

“Yes,” Thomas said, nodding. His lips were red and swollen, his cheeks flushed and shiny, and his eyes had turned dark with want. He squeezed James’ waist under his fingers, “ _yes_.”

James could remember the first time he was exposed to this act. He could remember the chill in his freshly-washed hair, the smell of soap and rosewater on Thomas’ skin. He remembered the hot breath on his cleft, the wetness of that first touch. It had felt sinful to receive, but when he had returned the favour and Thomas had moaned above him, it had felt like a benediction.

He brought the rag up between them and spat quietly and messily onto it. Loud spitting, they had learned, was something to avoid. With nothing more than a soft noise, Thomas took a hand to his own leg, hooking it under his knee and pulling himself up and open. He accepted James’ touch with a small sigh, bringing him into another kiss as the sweat of the night and day was cleaned away from him in long, gentle strokes.

Once done, James threw the rag aside and rolled, finally, on top of Thomas. He could feel his lover’s chest through the thin linen of his shirt, could feel his cock where it was hard between them. James throbbed with sympathetic longing, pressing his hips down in a soft grind. His breeches had him trapped, and he strained against them. Thomas’ tongue was in his mouth. His hands had found James’ back and were pulling the fabric where it was tucked in. His legs caught James in place, the blanket covering his feet long kicked off.

James ducked his head back to Thomas’ neck and covered it in a flurry of kisses and kitten-licks, distracting Thomas as he delved one hand between them to fiddle with the buttons on his breeches and grant himself some relief. Thomas’ breath was shaky, coming in sighs and pants, and each time his chest heaved with breath James felt it press to his.

When the front panel of his breeches finally fell loose James moaned and gently bit the column of Thomas’ neck. They hadn’t worried too much about marks in London – cravats made for wonderful covers – but they had still been conservative in their love-making, being sure not to leave a bruise that would give them away. Here, in their home, the freedom with which they marked each other was liberating. There was no need to cover or hide, and James delighted in sucking great love-bites into Thomas’ skin, beneath his jaw, behind his ear, on the ridge of his collarbone. Under him, Thomas scratched at his back. His throat buzzed as he moaned into the still air. Once James had thoroughly marked him he continued his descent down his lover’s body.

The Carolina sun had bleached the sparse hairs on Thomas’ chest an even brighter blond, until they appeared silver and shiny. James rubbed his cheek against it, nuzzled the warm planes of Thomas’ pectorals, and skimmed his lips over a nipple. His shirt had rucked up as he had slid down, and he could feel Thomas’ cock against the skin of his stomach, hard and hot and rutting. With a smile James slipped a hand to Thomas’ hip and held him firmly against the mattress. Thomas groaned with a mixture of frustration and arousal, and James chuckled as he placed his mouth to his lover’s nipple once more.

“ _James_ ,” Thomas groaned, his voice with a hint of chagrin. He slid a hand up to the top of James’ head and pushed, urging him on towards his cock, his arse. James laughed harder but went easily, kissing Thomas’ ribs, his stomach, catching each scar he could glimpse on his way down.

“Turn over,” he said before he reached Thomas’ cock, and squeezed the hip under his palm.

With a pleased sigh Thomas did, letting go of James’ head and adjusting himself so his cock lay comfortably against the sheets. He lay almost as he had before, but with his legs widely spread, his knees propping him up so his arse was presented.

“Pillow?” James asked, and was summarily whacked by one that Thomas chucked down. He snorted his amusement, “Thanks.”

“Oh, did I hit you?” Thomas asked over his shoulder, his eyes twinkling with mischief. In reply James playfully swatted his arse, and lifted his hips a little to situate the pillow beneath.

When his lover’s behind was properly presented James leant forwards over Thomas, kissing his shoulders and pressing his hips against Thomas’ heated skin. His cock pressed into the soft flesh of Thomas’ glutes through the linen of his shirt and the two of them groaned together.

“James,” Thomas said again, frustration clear in his tone.

“One moment. I missed a spot.” James reached over to the table where the jar of oil still sat and dipped his fingers in again. Thomas, obviously seeing where his fingers had gone, grunted his acknowledgement and tilted his hips up against James’ crotch. It may not have been exactly what he wanted at that moment, but at least he would be touched in the area he wished it.

James, never one to miss the opportunity, kissed his way down the length of Thomas’ back, following the crooked dip of his spine with his lips and then his tongue. He knelt heavily behind Thomas, making sure to press his clothed legs to the sensitive backs of Thomas’ thighs, to thrust lightly, let him feel James’ desire. Thomas moaned into his arms, and James spread the oil evenly over his hands before laying them on the white globes of his lover’s arse and squeezing. The oil made the flesh slip from his grasp, James’ hands splaying wildly over flesh, and Thomas made a needy sound, legs straining to spread further.

For a while James simply spread the oil over Thomas’ cheeks, watching as the pale skin blushed prettily under the attention, listening to the sounds it dragged from Thomas’ throat when he pressed his thumbs down the cleft and teased over his hole. Each time he saw Thomas’ back begin to tense he would stop, slide a hand up to where he was straining, and bid him to relax until he did, and they would start again.

“James,” Thomas eventually said, “I’ve been hard for far too long now to not have had any attention.” His voice was tight, his breathing heavy, and James, too, was becoming impatient with himself. Without a word he shuffled down, and heard Thomas’ sigh of thanks.

The bed was too small for this, and James ended up with his feet planted on the floor and his torso laying on the mattress. He spread Thomas’s arse with his thumbs, and breathed hotly over his opening, which he watched twitch in response. A trickle of oil had slid over it, and James rubbed at it with his thumb until it was smeared all over. Thomas groaned impatiently, and then James was there. He pressed his tongue over the pucker of it, licked in a thick stripe up the oiled cleft of Thomas’ arse, and revelled in the broken sound it pulled from him.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Thomas hissed, pressing his arse back into James’ face. Eager, James took it, pressing his tongue there again and moving over Thomas’ opening in a slick massage. Over the pounding of blood in his ears he could hear Thomas’ curses, the filthy things that slipped from his mouth in moments like these, and he felt Thomas’ legs quake, his hips shift and tremble. A hand slid into his hair, pressing him closer, and James could not help but smile, lips spit-slick and beard wet with it.

“James, please.” Thomas was begging, and James let go of one of his cheeks, sliding two fingers either side of Thomas’ hole and licking through them, over them, until they were wet. He rubbed them teasingly over Thomas’ entrance, felt him bear back onto them eagerly, and set to sucking a mark into a cheek as he slid one inside.

Thomas was groaning words of encouragement. His hand slipped from James’ hair and he grabbed the bedsheets in fists. James slid his fingers deep, until his knuckles were pressed against Thomas’ rim, and licked hotly where they joined. Thomas’ resulting shout set the goat outside bleating, and James huffed laughter into the hot space in which he resided, sending Thomas into soft spasms. James could feel them around his fingers, pulling him in, gripping him tight, and he curled them hard in response. The groan he pulled from his lover shot straight to his cock.

He fucked Thomas thoroughly with his fingers, kissing his glutes, the back of his thighs, and holding his sac in one hand. His own arousal hung heavy between his legs, too far beyond the bed to rut against it, and James was sure he was dripping precome on their floor.

“My prick,” Thomas was gasping, “James, please, touch me.”

Moaning, James pulled his fingers from Thomas and patted his behind. “Move up,” he said, voice thick and needy. Thomas scrabbled up and James followed, hands finding Thomas’ hips and guiding him to turn around. He caught a look at Thomas’ face, flushed and lust-drunk, before lowering himself once more and taking Thomas’ cock into his mouth.

His fingers fumbled over the backs of Thomas’ thighs, drawing from him a keening whimper, and then slid back into his hole. James wasted no time now, hooking his fingers against Thomas’ prostate and sucking him to the root, and that’s how Thomas came; deep in James’ mouth, his hands scrabbling over his shoulders, riding the fingers inside of him.

James rutted against the sheets as he swallowed and took his fingers delicately from Thomas’ behind. He pulled off of Thomas’s cock with a wet pop, throat working to swallow down the entirety of his seed. Thomas had collapsed in a heap against the headboard, but watched James as he knelt up and desperately took himself in hand.

“Come here,” he said, reaching a hand out to grab the front of James’ shirt and drag him closer. James went willingly, knees shuffling over the bedsheets, tugging his shirt over his head as he did. Thomas met him with a wet kiss to his collarbone and a hand on his cock, and worked James to completion in only a few seconds. James spent messily into his hand, moaning loudly against Thomas’ hair, hips twitching into the tight grip of his fist.

For a while they stayed there, swaying, panting, and then Thomas grunted, butted his head against James’ chin, and pressed a lingering, chaste kiss to his lips. “That was really quite brilliant,” he whispered as they pulled apart. James laughed in response, and rested their foreheads together.

“It was alright, wasn’t it?” he replied, and cupped Thomas’ neck in one broad palm. “How are you feeling?”

Thomas sighed deeply. “Like a bedsheet that has been pulled through a mangle,” he said, two parts satisfied to one part exhausted.

“Like you could sleep?” James ventured to ask, trying not to sound too hopeful and failing ever so slightly. Thomas was quiet in response, and finally let go of James’ cock, which had softened.

“Like I could try. If you stayed beside me,” he eventually replied.

Moments later they lay beneath the sheets. Thomas had been wiped down with the discarded rag, but still had an oily sheen to his back, buttocks, and thighs. James pressed his front against him, and sometimes shifted just to feel the slickness of oil and the slide of their flesh together.

It took half an hour, but Thomas did doze a little, and James held him through it, kissing a pock-mark scar on the back of his lover’s neck.

 

*

 

“Oh, God _damn_ it!”

There was a crash. Something shattered. James grit his teeth and thrust his spade into the earth again. He was sweating heavily in the midday sun, his shirt already stuck to his back, his fingers sliding on the handle of his shovel. Frustrated and hissed curses travelled out of the open window of their hut and James, overcome by his own bottled anger, threw the spade to the ground with a heavy thump. There were no more sounds after that, and truthfully James wanted nothing more than to pick up the shovel once more and continue digging, but he knew that Thomas would only be more bitter for James’ petulance. He wiped his hands on his breeches, wiped his forehead on the back of his dirt-smeared arm, and made for the open window of their hut.

He could not see Thomas inside, but he could hear him as he got closer, and leant heavily on the sill.

“What now?” he asked, and Thomas appeared from behind the kitchen worktop. His face was a blistering red, a vein standing out in the middle of his forehead.

“I broke that God-awful plate you left.” Thomas said sharply, his voice turning crisp around the vowels, hot with anger. James bit his tongue to keep from replying in just as acidic a tone. Today was a bad day for the both of them, the ghosts of their pasts heavy on their backs.

It had started awfully when they had been awoken to a _horrific_ commotion. At first, the both of them had been obviously confused. James had leapt from the bed without thought, but stumbled at the solidness of the floor beneath his feet, at the stillness of it all, interrupted only by the screams from outdoors and the panicked whimpers of the man he had left behind. It had taken a few seconds to realise he was not at sea at all, that the screaming outside was not his men, that this room was not his cabin.

Meanwhile, Thomas had scrabbled his way over the floor, his breath tight in his throat, shallow and panicked, his eyes wide. He’d fixed himself behind the bedside cabinet, one hand clasped over his mouth, the other wrapped around his legs and pulling them close to his chest. Later, James would realise he was trying to cramp his tall frame out of sight.

The screaming hadn’t waited for either of them to situate themselves and went on in great, piercing bursts. James, covered in a cold sweat as a battle-rush ran strong through his blood, ran to the dresser to pull out his weapons and burst out of the front door to face whatever chaos was behind it. He hadn’t known what to expect. A giant cat was not one of the situations that had run through his mind.

It had the goat by the neck which was screaming for dear life, each yell only stopping so that she could fill her lungs for the next. The night was dark, _fucking dark_ , but in the moonlight James could see the creature’s unblinking eyes, its raised hackles, its massive form. It had growled at him, desperate and low.

James reacted on instinct, based on the fear and blood-lust that had infected his body the moment he was torn from his sleep. He yelled, loud as he could, and when the beast only growled harder over the bleating cries of its prey, James shot at it.

He’d missed, as one would probably expect of a man shaking with the surprise of it all and shooting into the dark. The goat’s scream had weakened and trailed off, like air draining from a set of pipes. The cat, surprised by the great sound the pistol let off and the flash it had sparked, had scarpered. And James, remembering lamely that such beasts were meant to be afraid of noise, had yelled after it, but did not move from his place just outside the door.

In the dead silence that followed, he’d noticed the chaos the beast had caused – the feathers strewn on the ground, the half-eaten bodies of two of their chickens. He’d reckoned, over the smell of caught powder, he could smell the blood from the goat’s wounds.

She was dead, he could tell that without even needing to look at her.

The cat could return, and though James thought he’d heard that they were solitary creatures he’d not wanted to wait and find out.

When he returned to their cabin he had barely thought of Thomas, who continued to shiver, quiet as he possibly could be, in the corner of their room. James had lit candles, had begun with orders – the remaining chickens would have to be brought into the house or they would surely lose them, they needed to think about fencing the property, had they not been emptying their chamber pot around the corners of the enclosure? – and had only stopped at the sound of a sniffle. In the sickly yellow light of the candle Thomas had looked broken, frightened, and James’ stomach had fallen away from him.

It took half an hour to calm Thomas to a state where James felt he could go and check on the chickens. In that time an enterprising fox had come to steal the carcasses, and he’d chased it off with a wave and a ‘ _shoo!_ ’. He brought the last three in, and they clucked noisily as they moved about their home, disgruntled at being awoken and curious to investigate the new area presented to them.

Sleep didn’t find them for the rest of the night. Thomas was still slowly coming out of whatever nightmare he had woken into, and James was preoccupied with herding chickens, checking on his lover, and keeping an ear out for wild animals that might come back. There were no sounds from outside that suggested the cat had returned to abscond with its prey. The chickens eventually perched on the backs of the settee and fell asleep. And Thomas, who James had coaxed back into the bed, calmed after hours of shivering, of silence, of uneven breathing. He lay on top of the sheets in the weak dawn light and looked exactly as James had pictured him for years – tortured, soulless, dead.

But Thomas soon rose. He made them both tea. He ate a slice of bread thick with honey and accompanied by a mealy apple. He survived, as he had hundreds of times before, and in the wake of his misery came anger.

James had seen Thomas angry more times than he could count. Once in London, when Miranda was there to soothe him, to take his leaden anger and transmute it into gold, and many more times since, when without her touch he was like a snorting bull, a stinging wasp. James had seen Thomas _rage_. He had watched his eyes grow fierce as they stood back and let Oglethorpe’s plantation burn, watched his hands curl into fists as James relayed to him the events in Charlestown, watched him hiss and seethe as he spoke of his abuses and abusers, and of all the faith he had lost in the world. He had seen Thomas spiteful, he had seen Thomas weary. He had seen him as he is now; tired and frustrated and fit to burst with vitriol, like a pot with a lid left over a fire – frothing, bubbling, spitting.

Thomas always calmed, in the end. His anger was not consuming. His anger was not a razed town, scorched fields, a murder in a ship’s cabin. But knowing that he would eventually relax did not make living with Thomas any easier when anger overcame him.

James himself felt like a picked seam which was slowly coming undone. Exhaustion flickered beneath his eyelids each time he blinked. His body felt heavy with it, and yet restless. His head ached, his hands refused to grip properly, and his back was stiff and creaky. The ground still felt unnaturally still under his feet, and the salt-less air felt cloying in his mouth.

Leaving Flint behind had been something James had wished for a decade. But the ghost of him was stuck like the scars on his skin, like the swagger of his sea legs. Today Flint fought his death and raised his head, bared his teeth, and doggedly refused to back down.

James didn’t give Thomas a reply, and watched silently as he disappeared back behind the worktop. He could hear the clinking sounds of pottery being picked up, and, now secure in the knowledge that Thomas had not hurt himself, turned back to the earth. The grave he had been digging was far enough from the house to not be a nuisance, but still within sight. (Despite the tension in the air, James had not wanted to wander too far from the house, as at some point Thomas may lapse again into mania, and he wanted to be there to aid him through it.) Beside the freshly turned earth sat the remains of their goat, which had already begun to smell in the early autumn heat. Flies buzzed on the bones as they took their bloody fill.

The ribs, the haunches, the _meat_ , were in the kitchen, and James knew he would have to preserve them somehow. But the useless spine, the entrails, the hooves and the head needed a grave, or their mouldering would bring more wildlife to their home.

James had never dug a grave before. As his raw hands took up the spade again he thought of Miranda’s corpse, defiled, beaten, and left to burn on the pyre of their shared fury.

 

*

 

Later, when the day had cooled and so had their tempers, the two of them walked down to the river. They built a fire, and James spent an age heating river water, cooling it, and then washing the fear from Thomas’ body where it clung and stank. His hands were rough and raw from a day of digging, of rubbing salt into meat, of scrubbing chicken shit from their wooden floor. They barely felt the flesh under them as they washed. Due to that, James made sure to be even more gentle, his touch light as a feather as he worked their homemade soap into a lather on Thomas’ arms.

Thomas gasped as he squirmed back from James’ fingers when they wormed too close, to gentle, to his ribs and the ticklish hollow of his armpit. “I apologise,” he mumbled, and James could tell by the heaviness of his inflection that the apology was for more than just pulling away.

“It’s alright,” he assured, and offered the soap on his palm to Thomas, should he want to scrub himself.

With his fingers dipped, Thomas set to washing himself. James took the opportunity to work on his back, massaging the muscles of Thomas’ shoulders as he did. They were quiet again for a long time, James taking his time washing the places where Thomas’ sweat had gathered – the back of his neck, the crooks of his knees, his feet, between his toes – until Thomas sighed.

“When you woke up, I couldn’t recognise you,” he said with one hand clasped around his soapy calf. James stilled, his heart suddenly riotous in his chest. _Neither could I_ , he thought darkly, though it was a lie. James knew Flint intimately, and could recognise the weight of him in a second. “I thought I was somewhere else,” Thomas continued, and then James realised he wasn’t talking about Captain Flint, but about his time in Bethlem. He traced a finger over a blister scar on Thomas’ ankle.

“I-” his throat was tight and his voice rough, and James paused to clear his throat before he continued. “I was confused, too. I thought I was back on a ship.”

Thomas sighed, settled, relaxed muscles that James hadn’t known he was holding tense. “Oh,” he said, like some mystery had just been solved. James looked up at him from his feet, and saw understanding on Thomas’ face, through he was unsure what exactly it was that Thomas was newly perceiving.

“So I apologise, also,” James continued, “I thought I had left all of that behind.”

Thomas pulled his foot from James’ hand and set it, still soapy, on the dirty riverbank. “James, it is a part of you I love no less than the rest.” He sighed, and reached out a slippery hand to slide into the trimmed hairs of James’ beard, his palm warm against his lover’s chin. “It is also a part that saved the both of us from the teeth of a hungry lion, and thus I am currently inclined to embrace it wholeheartedly.” Thomas smiled, and then sobered, sweeping his hand into James’ hair and looking him clear in the eye as if to impart some great importance through gaze alone. “I apologise if, through my behaviour, I have somehow communicated to you that I am uncomfortable with your past. I would hope that my commitment to you and my happiness here is apparent, and that I trust you, dearly, with my life, my heart, and my soul.

“My… terseness throughout today was not caused by any anger towards you. I am simply tired, very tired, of having to relive the tortures of Bethlem each day. I am tired of feeling like tinder, ready to catch at a moment’s notice. I am tired of being-” Thomas’ voice caught, broke, and James watched the tears well up in his eyes. He shifted closer, ready to pull the other into his arms, but Thomas stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Let me finish,” he said, and took a deep, calming breath.

“I am tired of being what they wanted me to be.” He finally said, forcing the words through a closed throat.

“You are not,” James protested, and Thomas pushed at his chest again.

“I do not mean that I am ashamed, or that I am some mad grieving husband, or whatever it is they told the world I was.” Thomas ignored James’ open wince at the roundabout mention of Miranda, “I mean that they have made me fragile, and I am _beyond pissed off_ that it is so many years after and I still cannot recover from it.”

James was quiet, waiting to see if Thomas would speak further. When he did not, he shuffled forwards on his creaking knees and pressed a kiss to Thomas’ lips.

“You are the strongest, bravest man I know,” he whispered when they broke apart. And it was true. “But even stone will wear-”

“I _know,_ ” Thomas interrupted, able to sound both weary and fierce at the same time. “But that does not mean I am not going to be angry about it.” He sighed, and his hand slid out of James’ hair to rest on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry that today was a bad day,” James said, feeling unable to say anything else, or anything more. “Tomorrow will be better.”

 

*

 

On the good mornings, Thomas was not too far removed from the man he had been ten years ago. He by no means enjoyed waking up and facing the world, but he tolerated it with all the grace of a man who had long learnt that mornings simply _were_ , and no amount of denial or blustering could make it otherwise. He toileted and dressed and drank boiled water mixed with honey over breakfast. He yawned and scratched at his freshly shaved cheek. He spoke of the day’s activities – what was needed and what was not. James watched him, stood with him, kissed his steam-warmed lips.

Sometimes he imagined they were young again, that they were taking respite from London in the country. That they had eschewed the Hamilton estate for the simple privacy of a woodland lodge in the grounds. That there were no scars on their bodies, nor on their souls. That Miranda was waiting for their return in London where she had taken a new lover – some smart and utterly debauched young thing who doted on her, was _enraptured_ by her. It was a silly fantasy, and James never entertained it for long, but it allowed him some sweet wistfulness now and then as opposed to the raw sting of the decade past.

Of course, if they had been taking their ease, if they were to exist as they had been ten years ago, those elusive lazy mornings would not evade them still.

As ever, James was quite unfazed by their continuous early rise, though he admitted it would be pleasant to rest, to snooze, to wake up slow and warm in Thomas’ arms. He supposed that he had never really had the chance to enjoy lie-ins as anything other than a luxury only occasionally indulged. As a boy he had too much to learn, too much to do, and as soon as he joined the Marine Society any chance of sleeping in was banished from his life. It was straight to work for him, and the Navy is, and was, no place for a wastrel.

Thomas, however, _he_ was raised with the opportunity to be a slugabed. Though James knew from the complaints of others in his regiment that the schooling at Eton drilled a boy to wake before dawn, Thomas had truly kicked the habit by the time James had met him.

James had known of Thomas’ lethargic nature even before they fell into bed together. When meeting they would often do so either in the afternoon, or such late morning it may well have been so. When working Thomas would usually be willing to continue deep into the night, content in his ability to catch up on rest the next morning. Miranda had rolled her eyes about it to James a few times, and he had quickly learnt that she kept herself entertained whilst her husband slept with trips to view Egyptian artefacts, and by seducing bewitched Naval Attachés.

When he and Thomas had finally, thoroughly fallen in love, James had been able to witness the full extent of his lie-ins. Always the first to wake, he would lay in their bed and watch Thomas sleep. There was something incredibly intimate about watching Lord Hamilton at rest.

Perhaps it was because, when awake, Thomas always appeared so composed, but seeing him bare-faced and bare-headed, shameless, and drooling against the linen of the bedspread was a treat. James spent hours admiring the slightly crooked set of his lover’s nose, the curling wrinkles beginning to form at the corners of his eyes, the glimpse of his straight, flat teeth through parted lips. After a while, though, he would bore of simply staring.

It used to be that he could touch, would touch. He’d wake Thomas with sweet kisses, with firm and warm hands. He’d take him in his mouth and bring all of his lover to wakefulness. Afterwards, sated, they would hold each other and mumble compliments into each other’s lips. Now, even if James were to be given the chance, he would not take it.

Yes, plenty had changed in ten years.

 

*

 

“I wanted so badly to take you away from London,” James said one night. He didn’t have to define the you; they both knew it extended beyond Thomas and to the missing leg of their three-stumped stool. “I believed that out here, beyond the reach of gossip, we could be happy.”

Thomas looked up from his book. “Free,” he said, knowing.

There was wetness in James’ eyes. He didn’t blink it away. “Yes, free,” he agreed, as freedom was easier to weep for than loss.

The book closed with a muffled clap.

He had been innocent then, James thought, to imagine that they could have continued their life as it was here in The New World. If he had become aware of anything in the past ten years it was that a life was not some easily packaged thing that could be measured in weight or quantified as a body.

The world did not care if you clung to your books and paintings, if you sought gold and riches, or if you had friends and lovers. Everything changes with time and with place, and those books will burn and that gold will run and those friends and lovers will change, and die, and be lost to you. Nassau, New Providence Island, Charlestown… these places were not homes, they were - despite Her claims to the contrary – not England, nor a territory that could be owned and tamed. Society, with all of her laws and all of her luxuries, was not yet found on these shores. London could never be rebuilt on this ground.

Thomas rose from the couch, walking to the kitchen table and sitting beside James. He reached out a hand to pull the paring knife from James’ grasp and set it on the table, and then took the potato he had been peeling and placed it back into the bucket of spuds.  James watched dully, doing nothing to stop him or aid him, allowing himself to be moved as per Thomas’ whim.

“What on Earth are you crying for, you daft man?” Thomas asked, voice cheerful in that slightly fragile way that belied his worry and his desire to lighten what was becoming a very dark mood. “We _are_ free.” He took both of James’ hands in his own, clasping them tight and leaning into his line of sight, trying to catch his eye.

James looked at him, at the lines on his face, at the stubble they had yet to shave from his face, and remembered all they had before, and all they had lost. “But the cost of it-” he began.

“The cost does not matter,” Thomas said, voice hard and unwavering, like an impenetrable wall. “You cannot dwell on the past, James. We cannot get stuck on the things we have done, the things we lived through.” He squeezed James’ hands, wet with frothy starch. There was a pause as Thomas obviously formed some sort of argument in his head, and arranged words into some sort of line which he hoped would scupper James’ own position.

After a moment, Thomas shifted minutely in his seat, rubbed his thumb over the back of James’ hand, and said, “I pardon you.”

“What?”

It was such a simple and silly thing to say that it startled a small laugh from James, who looked at Thomas with disbelief.

“I said, ‘I pardon you’. When I first meant to pardon all the pirates of Nassau I did so knowing what atrocities they may have committed. How could I not issue that pardon to you, too, not just knowing all you have done but also the reasons for which you have done them?” The chair Thomas was on squealed over the floorboards as he pulled it closer to James with an awkward shuffle. “ _I pardon you_.”

James regarded Thomas with ever growing affection, but retained his weariness. His hands moved out from beneath Thomas’ to clasp them reciprocally. “I was under the impression that the Pirates were to be pardoned so that they could work the land and aid us in the execution of our plan.” His lips had a wry twist, and his voice held a tease, but Thomas knew that James was not yet convinced. “Is that the reason for which I am pardoned?”

Thomas thought of the potatoes growing in the earth outside, of the shaggy bushes of peas, the long ears of corn. He thought of their morning kisses, their Sunday reading, their shared baths by the river, their peasant meals on the solid dining table. James’ eyes glistened in the firelight.

“No,” Thomas smiled, and took one hand from James’ to cup his whiskered cheek. “It is because it is the right thing to do.”

 

*

 

This morning James blinked his eyes open to a well-lit room. It was winter, and usually upon waking he was welcomed by a stark blackness so deep he wouldn’t have seen a hand in front of his face. At first, he thought that perhaps Thomas had woken before him and lit the grate, but there was cold biting at the tip of his nose, and he was aware of cold feet on his calves and sour morning breath on the back of his neck. It was clear that Thomas was still abed. A snore sounded behind him. It echoed between his back and Thomas’ chest; a great, rumbling thing made loud by a sniffle.

James could remember the first time he heard that snore. It had been such a surprise - so at odds with his idea of who Thomas was, what a _Lord_ was - that he had startled Thomas awake with the swiftness of his turn in their small attic cot. Afterwards, when Thomas was asleep once more and James was close behind him, he had wondered how he had imagined Thomas to sleep any other way. Thomas was a man of sound; of words and arguments and laughter, of moans and praises and curses shouted like prayers. How could James have thought that this man, whose noisiness could have been insufferable were it not for the fierce devotion James felt for him, would be prevented from making those sounds by the state of sleep?

Now the steady sound of Thomas’ breathing, marked by that rumbling snuffle, was a lullaby to fall asleep to.

James was not sleeping now.

He felt awake, felt _rested_ in a way he had not for a long time. His body was lax and warm but for his nose, sticking too far from the heat of his face and uncovered by their sheets and blankets and the thick furs on their bedspread. He wriggled his toes, tucked his face into the snug warmth of the bedding, and sighed happily. All was quiet about him but for Thomas’ snores, the distant birdsong, the wind in the bare trees, and the river’s soft wet splashes.

He dozed for a while longer. Under the blankets, time did not exist. It ticked by at a snail’s pace, and then seemed to run at a gallop. When he next opened his eyes, the sun had moved and cast new shadows through the windows. Thomas’ arm about his waist shifted and squeezed. There was movement, a shuffle, a sleep-thick groan, and a quick inhale as consciousness again found his lover.

James turned, and Thomas blinked back at him, dazed and confused.

“Good morning,” he smiled. Thomas had sleep gathered in the corners of his eyes, and his hair was a mess. He gazed blearily at James, and then propped himself up on an elbow to look around the room.

“We slept in,” he said in lieu of a greeting, obviously surprised.

“Yes,” James confirmed, and slid an arm under Thomas where the bed was warm. After another moment of looking about, Thomas lay back into him, burying his face against the turn of James’ shoulder.

They were wordless for a while, simply enjoying the slow pace of the morning. The cold air was uncomfortable against James’ skin, but it was worth it to hold Thomas, to feel his sleep-warm skin, to rub his back through his nightshirt. There was a smile pressed to his shoulder. James was reminded of those lazy mornings – of soft kisses and hard bodies, of unhurried couplings.

“I could stay here all day,” Thomas mumbled against him. James, because he could, bent his neck and kissed the crown of Thomas’ head. Hair tickled the tip of his nose.

“We could, if you like,” he mumbled. “I can light a fire and make us breakfast and we could just… lay here, and read.”

“We’d get crumbs in the sheets,” Thomas sighed, shifting to look up at James. His eyes were soft and warm.

“I would catch every one,” James assured him, and leant down to take Thomas’ lips in a chaste morning kiss, a demonstration of his technique. Against him, Thomas chuckled. His back and lips buzzed with it. He rubbed his hand over James’ chest.

“Would you make tea?” He asked between kisses, their lips close enough to touch through the request. It sounded like an acquiescence, and James pressed their lips harder together with a sound of assent before parting and slipping as carefully as he could from the bed. He did not want to let the cold air under the blankets. And cold it was. James pulled on his dressing robe over his nightshirt to stave off the chill, and set about their usual routine.

He rebuilt the dead fire, he poured water into the kettle and set it above the caught tinder, he prepared them a breakfast of honey and bread and dried fruits. After a while his toes complained on the cold floor and James curled them inwards, hobbling about the room on the like a bumble-footed bird. Thomas watched him from the bed fondly, lazily plucking at a loose thread in their blanket and sighing with contentment.

“What a picture we make.” He smiled, and rubbed his face against the sleep-warm pillow.

James brought Thomas his plate of food, sliding it into his lap and then sitting beside him. He curled his freckled legs up on the side of the bed, tucking his bare toes into the loose knit of the throw. “Oh? What of?”

Thomas, busy with a mouthful of honey-soaked bread, waved his hand vaguely. “Pure domesticity,” he eventually replied, and sucked a sticky drop from his thumb. James let his eyes linger on his lips, tight about the digit, the hollow of his cheeks as he sucked. He reached out towards him, pulling the sticky fingers from Thomas’ mouth and to his own.

Thomas’ fingers were warm, long, and calloused. They staggered over his cheeks, catching with sticky sweetness. When James kissed them and took them into his mouth, they bloomed with flavour; honey, and just the slightest hint of sweat from the night.

“I like the sound of that,” James rumbled, letting Thomas’ fingers slip from his lips and enjoying the dark-eyed look his lover gave him.

“I thought we were going to read,” Thomas said, and slid his wet fingers into the scratchy thatch of James’ beard.

“Are we no longer?” James teased with mock confusion, raising an eyebrow and kissing Thomas’ palm. Thomas clamped his fingers shut and tugged at his beard, equally teasing.

“Not if you continue in that way.” Thomas’ voice was sleep-rough and lust-warm, and he pressed his thumb into James’ mouth against his crooked bottom teeth. James nipped at it, light so as not to hurt.

“I had best stop, then,” he slurred over Thomas’ invading digit.

“Yes, I suppose you should.”

Neither of them moved, and James smiled around the thumb in his mouth, teeth bared but eyes calm. He reached up and held Thomas’ wrist, pulling just enough to free his lips and grant him space to speak.

“What about the tea?” He asked, massaging the fleshy bulb of Thomas’ palm.

Thomas glanced over his lover’s shoulder at the kettle on the smoking fire. “I can think of better ways to warm up,” he smiled, and tugged at James’ beard again, pulling him close.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the longest thing I have written in years! Exactly one month ago I realised how much I love lying in and, of course, my mind turned to James and Thomas lying in and... this happened. It was meant to be no more than 5,000 words of fluff and look how that worked out.
> 
> I know that big cats are no longer numerous in South Carolina, but I figured that there was no way they'd been hunted out yet, and that if James and Thomas had moved close enough to the mountains that there was a possibility they could have encountered... something. I initially had wolves in mind but I worried myself about the possibility of them being beleaguered by the pack. So... cat.
> 
> I'd like to thank [AstronautSquid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AstronautSquid/pseuds/AstronautSquid) and Palebluedot for being supportive through this and for letting me bounce excerpts off of them.


End file.
